Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

If that was an audition, he could have at least done one or the other well. He could have at least put up a credible economic argument about something, which he did not do, if it was his job application for the shadow Treasurer, or he could have been serious about the investments in public hospitals. But he has done neither of those. To add insult to injury, this shadow minister for health thinks it is a joke to make a comment to an interjection that a member should go and take his medication. As the shadow minister for health, that is a pretty irresponsible, offhand comment to make. I do not really think that the shadow minister is doing himself or the issue any credit by making those sorts of offhand comments if he really wants to be taken seriously, or if he aspires longer term to be the minister for health. But it seems he already has his eyes set elsewhere.

The other thing that was particularly breathtaking, I am sure, for those on this side of the House was that the shadow minister said that this was a really bad COAG deal, that we do not really want all this money on health and it is all just going to be wasted. Then he said, ‘If we were in government we would have put together this package as well, so do not give them any credit.’ It does not make any sense at all—the fact that they did not put that money in for the 12 years that they were there, the fact that they ripped money out and now, somehow, 12 months later, we should believe that the shadow minister, the then assistant Treasurer, had written on an envelope somewhere the amount of money that he was going to put into health, if he only got the chance at the next election. The community does not believe you. You ripped money out of public hospitals. Why should we believe you that you set aside some amount of money that you were going to put in when it is only us that have actually delivered on that?

He also does not understand the previous health agreements. He stands up and says, ‘This is throwing good money after bad.’ I challenge him to go and find any emergency department around the country where they say that putting $750 million extra into emergency departments is throwing good money after bad. We are actually making sure that we provide relief to those emergency departments. But he pretends that the old healthcare agreements were outcomes focused, when in fact it was only the negotiation of this agreement that is putting outcomes in focus for the first time. I think the shadow minister is revealing that he does not understand the detail of this, he does not know what was in the previous agreements, he is not prepared to acknowledge that this is the biggest ever investment that has been made in a number of areas—Indigenous health, preventative health, workforce reform—and, instead, he stands up and just bags it all.

The other thing about the shadow minister—and I think the member for Banks might have provoked the bizarre interjection from the shadow minister—is that we on this side of the House, just celebrating our 12 month anniversary in government, are accused of having been complicit with the states in running down our public hospitals for the last decade. I had to think about that for a moment. I seem to remember that actually it was the coalition in government draining money out of our public system. Somewhat bizarrely, he accuses us, after all those years in opposition arguing for more investment in health, of being complicit in running down our health system. Nobody is going to be able to believe that, Shadow Minister, and if you are serious about fixing our hospitals, you would actually be debating with us what good news there was in the COAG agreement, and congratulating us for putting outcomes in that are about driving health outcomes, improving quality, improving throughput and making sure access is better. He says that nothing has been done when, for example, we are already increasing GP places across the country We are going to have 250 extra GP places across the country after a cap, cruelly put in place by the previous government, meant that young graduating doctors wanting to go into general practice were going to be turned away even though most of us suffer from doctor shortages in our electorates. They did nothing about it. He cannot stand up and say that is a good idea.

On hospital reform, the package deals with workforce—an area neglected by the previous government for more than a decade. The previous government had a blind spot when it came to workforce. It is the single biggest capacity constraint in the system and we are investing, in our first year of government, in a deal that delivers $1.1 billion to the workforce to make sure that as the system expands, as the demands of the community grow, we will have the doctors and nurses, physios, dieticians and others ready to treat people. How can this be an argument? How can he suggest this is the position of a government that is neglecting health? It just does not stack up.

We are putting money into subacute care to provide for elderly people who stay in hospital too long because there is nowhere for them to go—no transition care, no step-down care and no aged-care bed. Of course, our election commitments that we are already delivering on in terms of extra aged-care places are rolling out. But in the interim we also need to make sure that there are other types of care available. So we have allocated $500 million to support an extra 1,600 subacute beds, which will increase capacity, I understand, by five per cent per year for four years. This is a big difference in terms of what we will be able to do in our public hospitals.

We put money in for accountability and making sure transparency exists. The shadow minister says that there is nothing in this for the public and that he does not see where the money is going to go. For the first time, we are negotiating reporting standards for the states and territories, whom, contrary to the member’s assertions, we do not always agree with. But we do not think there is any need to finger-point if you are not prepared to work with them to try to improve the system. That is what we are doing. Of course we are going to keep pressure on them and we are going to keep pressure on ourselves to make sure that we are doing better in community care and in the sectors that we are responsible for. This agreement delivers on that.

I have already mentioned preventative health, the way you take pressure off hospitals, we have talked about Indigenous health and we are putting money into e-health. All of these are good-news stories about our health system and are areas that were neglected by the previous government. The shadow minister started his speech with this big song and dance about how we had changed our position because he could not find on the Prime Minister’s website the details about election commitments that we remain committed to. In fact in health we had, I think, 85 different election commitments. Each and every one of those is being delivered on. From additional estimates in February, after we were first elected, to the budget, they are being delivered.

We have been entirely consistent—the Prime Minister, all of my cabinet colleagues and me—in saying that we, in the middle of next year, will make an assessment of whether the states and territories are moving towards the reforms that are needed to fix our hospital system. We have not been in any way secretive, tricky or sneaky—the sort of standards that the previous government always applied—we just stood up and said, ‘In the middle of next year we will see how things are going. We will look at the report from the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. We will see how the states are travelling in delivering outcomes that we are giving them money for.’ The agreement on Saturday was a big step towards signalling that we want to work with the states and territories and that they want to work with us to improve standards, but we remain committed to making a decision, after looking at the situation, in the middle of next year when we have received the report from Dr Bennett and her Health and Hospitals Reform Commission.

Again, the shadow minister cannot even be consistent on that. The opposition stand up and say that we are all about reviews and ask why we do not do things more quickly. We deliver a $64.8 billion package in health on the weekend and then they say, ‘Why don’t you wait for the review,’ because we are locking out their assessment. The shadow minister cannot have it both ways. In fact we believe that you can do two things at once: we believe that you can invest in our hospital system now and you can plan for the future and be prepared to reform in the future. The opposition do not get it. The shadow minister is not concentrating on his job because he is busily out there trying to undermine the member for Curtin—trying to show off his economic standards and credibility. He is not focusing on what has been delivered in the health system.

I did not hear the shadow minister stand up and talk about the state-by-state breakdowns of the investment that we are making following the agreement at COAG, but I thought that some of my colleagues over on this side of the House might be interested to hear about this. I can see the member for Dawson, the member for Petrie and a number of Queenslanders here. More than $12 billion extra is going into the Queensland health system. I see my colleague the parliamentary secretary in the chamber. Over $15 billion is going into Victoria. I can see the member for Blaxland, the member for Banks and others from New South Wales here. Over $20 billion is going to New South Wales to invest in their hospitals, their workforce and the health of their community. In South Australia about $5 billion is going into the health system. There will be $1.4 billion for Tasmania, and I am sure the member for Franklin and the member for Bass will be pleased about that. Nearly $900 million will be invested here in the ACT and well over half a billion dollars in the Northern Territory. I have not seen anybody stand up and say that they do not want that money invested in their system. We have two Queenslanders sitting here at the table opposite me. Do you truly want us to use that $12 billion for something else and not put it into Queensland?

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